The expulsion from China of our colleague Ursula Gauthier is unjustifiable

Ursula Gauthier, Beijing correspondent of the magazine L’Obs, has been ordered to leave the country on December 31. The reaction from Paris has been weak.

Le Monde
| 30.12.2015 à 11h06
• Mis à jour le
04.01.2016 à 09h23

We protest against the abusive treatment by the People’s Republic of China of Ursula Gauthier, Beijing correspondent of the magazine L’Obs. After enduring a campaign of insults in the official media and receiving death threats posted on her Facebook page, she has been notified by the Chinese authorities that she is being expelled from the country on December 31 at midnight. We also deplore the apparent desire of the French authorities to avoid making waves over this unjustifiable expulsion.

Ursula Gauthier is accused by Beijing of having ‘encouraged terrorism’ in an article published on November 18 on the web site of the L’Obs, and of consequently not being ‘suitable’ to work as a journalist in China. The situation is worthy of a novel by Franz Kafka. The communist authorities are demanding that she issue a public ‘apology’ for statements that have been falsely attributed to her.

The article in question concerns the situation in Xinjiang, a vast region in the west of the country where there have been clashes for many years between the police and Chinese army, on the one hand, and a militant fringe of the Uighur ‘ethnic minority’, which is Turkophone and mainly Muslim, on the other. Ms. Gauthier is accused of writing that Beijing’s policy of forced assimilation of 10 million Uighurs, especially in the fields of culture, religion and language, is partially responsible for the bloody attacks, some of them terrorist, that have targeted the Han ethnic majority and Chinese officials in recent years.

For Beijing, in contrast, virtually all of these ‘incidents’ can be blamed on ‘international terrorism’, in the same way as the November attacks in Paris.

Economic diplomacy, doormat diplomacy

Ms. Gauthier has been accredited since 2009. She has deep knowledge of China, where she earlier spent about ten years. She is one of the few journalists based in Beijing to travel regularly to the Tibet and Xinjiang regions, where the Chinese authorities face recurrent protest movements that are invariably put down. The official Chinese press rarely breathes a word about this, while maximum efforts are made to dissuade the foreign media from going to these areas to report on the situation. It is practically impossible for a journalist to work in Xinjiang without being followed by plainclothes agents. The reporters who dare to go there are regularly detained or expelled from the region.

Likewise, nobody really knows what is happening in the ‘Autonomous Region of Tibet’ because reporters cannot freely exercise their profession there, in particular since the bloody riots that broke out in 2008. There is every indication that due, among other things, to her ongoing interest in the Tibet and Xinjiang regions, Ursula Gauthier was on a sort of blacklist of journalists who have become undesirable and need to be removed.

The official Xinhua news agency seemed to confirm this by commenting that ‘for a long time, Ursula Gauthier has always shown political partiality about China and often publishes articles without foundation’. As an ‘aggravating’ circumstance, the fact that she speaks fluent Chinese protected her from the pressure exercised by the authorities on the Chinese interpreters and assistants of foreign journalists. These Chinese staffers are often obliged to report to the police about the activities of their employer.

The absolute priority placed by the French government on ‘economic diplomacy’ most likely facilitated matters for the Chinese authorities. The corollary of this ‘doormat diplomacy’ – silence about the condemnations of political prisoners and silence on violations of freedom of speech – guaranteed in a way that Paris would allow Ms. Gauthier to be expelled without making too much of a fuss. Indeed, the reaction of the French Foreign Ministry consisted of just two sentences: ‘We regret that the visa of Ms. Ursula Gauthier was not renewed. France recalls the importance of journalists being able to exercise their profession in the world.’ Period.

Joe Biden and Bernard Kouchner more decisive than Laurent Fabius

It is worth recalling that when China threatened not to renew the visas of several New York Times journalists in 2013 as a result of articles that displeased it, Vice President Joe Biden of the United States rushed to intervene. He informed President Xi Jinping in person that there would be consequences if the reporters were expelled. The message got through. In 2009, China threatened not to renew the visa of an official of the French production company Hikari because of a documentary he produced for the France 5 channel titled, ‘Tiananmen, the forbidden memory’. The French foreign minister at the time, Bernard Kouchner, made it known that two Xinhua agency journalists based in France would have their visas revoked if this threat was carried out. Once again, the matter was settled without harm.

Whatever motivated it, the lack of firmness of the French authorities is irresponsible. The work of foreign correspondents in China is essential to the understanding of that country. French correspondents in Beijing and their foreign colleagues are now more than before at the mercy of an authoritarian caprice of the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party – which in fact issues the orders in this area. China, which ranks 176th out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index of Reporters Without Borders, can for its part project a toned-down image.

The People’s Republic of China, the world’s second largest economy and a country whose authoritarian and opaque power is growing increasingly assertive, deserves our ever closer attention. It is clear that the expulsion of Ursula Gauthier is not conducive to this process.